Animal Welfare

TREATING ANIMALS WITH INTEGRITY

We are committed to farm animal welfare and support suppliers with high industry standards for humane farming. We encourage supplier and food industry initiatives that promote the humane treatment of farm animals and continue to expand the availability of humanely raised food for our Guests. We also offer plant-based protein alternatives on our menu.

CAGE-FREE EGGS

Red Robin has made meaningful progress toward our commitment to source 100% cage-free eggs. As of 2023, our U.S. egg supply chain is approximately 21.6% cage-free.

POULTRY AND BROILER CHICKEN WELFARE

We are committed to working with our suppliers and others in the food industry to source high quality, humanely raised and processed poultry within our supply chain. We encourage and collaborate with our supplier partners in continuing to explore and implement improvements that support natural behaviors, environment, health welfare and humane processing including the continued efforts to align to broiler chicken welfare standards established by the Global Animal Partnership (GAP). In addition, our poultry suppliers follow USDA guidelines for safety and FDA regulations, including chicken free of any added hormones and steroids, and the responsible use of antibiotics. Our turkey suppliers are American Humane Association certified.

BEEF PRODUCTS

All beef is natural, domestic, USDA-inspected. Our beef suppliers require compliance with humane handling of livestock and proof of animal welfare audits.

DAIRY PRODUCTS

We encourage suppliers in our dairy supply chain to support industry efforts that promote the humane care and handling of cattle, including continued exploration of responsible polled breeding practices.

RESPONSIBLE SOURCING STANDARDS and OVERSIGHT

Responsible Sourcing – In addition to the animal welfare standards described above, we also require our suppliers to comply with safety, sanitation, and quality standards to maintain the sustainability and integrity of our supply chain and to enable us to trace ingredients back to their source. Read more about Suppliers Doing Their Part. 

Third-Party Animal Welfare Audits – We require all of our suppliers to participate in third-party audits under the Global Food Safety Initiative (“GFSI”) to promote the humane treatment of all animals in Red Robin's supply chain, as well as compliance with our animal welfare standards. We follow up on any reports of farm animal mistreatment, and any supplier who fails to comply with our animal welfare standards is subject to removal from our supply chain.

Third-Party Food Safety Inspectors – Third-party inspectors from an external organization perform unannounced food safety assessments at all restaurants at least three times per year. We have a track record of high scores, achieving top ratings as our average, and we embed these results in our leadership evaluations, reporting full food safety metrics to our Board of Directors every quarter. In addition, we leverage data from health departments and peer benchmarking to inform our food safety program.

Risk Analysis, Oversight, and Disclosures – To mitigate the risks to animal welfare and public health, we are committed to supporting suppliers who meet or exceed animal welfare industry and regulatory standards. We promote high food safety and food quality standards internally and throughout our supply chain. 

We acknowledge the importance of our disclosures regarding animal welfare and public health standards and have management and board level oversight around our disclosures relating to these standards.  Our internal team verifies each statement with back up from our third-party suppliers. Additional information regarding our ESG oversight can be found in our annual Sustainability Report. The Company regularly analyzes risks associated with its sourcing standards and related disclosures, including risks to public health, and concludes such standards are in line with legal and regulatory standards.  In addition, in response to a recent shareholder inquiry, we clarified the precise meaning of our statements with respect to hormone-free chicken sourcing standards, conforming our disclosure to state that our chicken has no “added” hormones in each instance and to be consistent with our other existing disclosures.  We also clarified that it is a USDA requirement that our chickens be free of added hormones and not a voluntary sourcing standard of Red Robin. As requested by the shareholder, we conducted a risk analysis with respect to the impact of our prior claims with respect to hormone-free chicken sourcing standards on our company and our customers and any related risks to public health, and we concluded that those claims do not give rise to any material risks to our company or our customers or to public health more generally.  We reached this conclusion because (i) as a substantive matter, our chickens are free of added hormones as required by USDA and FDA standards, and as such do not pose any material risks to the company, our customers or public health more generally and (ii) we have historically disclosed in numerous places that our chickens are free of “added” hormones (and we believe that our customers generally understand that all chickens have naturally occurring hormones) and therefore we do not believe that our historical disclosures regarding hormones in chickens, taken as a whole, give rise to any material risks to the company, our customers or public health more generally.

We are committed to open and honest disclosures about our successes and our challenges on animal welfare, including transparently reporting on our positions and our progress in our annual Sustainability Report. You can learn more about our business generally and the risks related to our business in our Form 10-K, Form 10-Q, and Form 8-K reports filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.